Sacred Places, Pilgrimage, and Tourism - Geography of Religion in Japan: Religious Space, Landscape, and Behavior - page 153

Fig. 4.11 Distribution of candidates for the World Heritage of the Nagasaki Church Group, 2009
(Nagasaki Prefectural World Heritage registration promotion division 2009 ). 1. Oura Cathedral 2.
Former Latin Seminario 8.Site Associated with Fr.M. de Rotz 9. Former Shitsu Aid Center 10.
Shitsu Church 11. Ono Church 19. Site of the Martyrdom of the 26 Saints of Japan 20. Site of St.
Dominic Church 21. Urakami Cathedral 22. Former Residence of Archbishop 23. Kaminoshima
Church 24. Kurosaki Church
Group below) as a case study. The tentative decision to register the churches on the
World Cultural Heritage site list illustrates the problems that local faith-related heri-
tages in rural regions and their cultural landscapes can expect, and the attention they
will be exposed to as a cultural heritage site.
Nagasaki is the area where the Catholic faith permeated earliest and deepest in
Japan, and is an important element in regional history (Matsui 2006 ). The Nagasaki
Church Group includes 26 churches and Christian heritage sites (Fig. 4.11 ) distrib-
uted through villages where the transportation system was very poor (Sotome
region, Hirado-Ikitsuki, Goto Islands and others). The churches were built by
Christians in hiding who moved to these areas in the Edo era to escape persecution.
The buildings include places of faith and living quarters, and are scenic (Fig. 4.12 ).
Many of these churches and buildings were designed by Yosuke Tetsukawa, who
was renowned for constructing churches in Kyushu. Some of the churches were
registered as government-designated important cultural properties, for example, the
Tabira (Fig. 4.13 ) and Kuroshima churches (Fig. 4.14 ).
The World Heritage registration movement evaluates buildings. The religious
and cultural property values of ecclesiastical buildings are acknowledged, but most
buildings, except special churches like the Oura Cathedral or Urakami Cathedral,
were not tourism targets. However, more and more tourists visit churches in villages
on isolated islands. Unlike pilgrims taking the Santiago route, no target church
exists, but many people visit a sequence of churches in what could be called a pil-
grimage to sacred places. The question is why the number of pilgrims to the
Nagasaki church group has increased.